Draft: December 1993

Tony Lawson

University of Cambridge

Faculty of Economics and Politics

Sidgwick Avenue

Cambridge CB3 9DD

U.K.

Forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Methodology, Vol.1, No.1, 1994.

It is an unfortunate if somewhat paradoxical feature of contemporary economics that methodological reasoning is widely denigrated - unfortunate because methodological reasoning is indispensable to the progress of any science; paradoxical in that those economists who criticise methodological activity usually engage in just that in (if amongst other things) their efforts to banish this apparently unneeded and/or undesirable activity from the discipline. In the following discussion I want first and foremost to question the dismissive attitude to methodology that emanates from within the mainstream of contemporary economics. In the course of so doing I want especially to challenge the conception, seemingly widely held, that those who dismiss methodological reasoning in economics somehow do so from some neutral, detached, external position. I shall suggest instead that the dismissal or rejection of methodology in economics arises in part as a consequence of its perpetrators holding to (or, in the recent case of `post-modernists', of reacting to but without fully transcending) a specific philosophical perspective, a perspective that underpins and conditions contemporary orthodox economics. Now because of the degree to which the current orthodoxy dominates the contemporary economics discipline, entailing as this does a widespread implicit acceptance of the philosophical perspective in question, it is not surprising that the rejection of methodology in economics is equally widespread. However, because the particular philosophical perspective in question (along with its post-modernist displacement) is ultimately untenable it follows that the project of contemporary economics is itself open to serious question. Amongst the numerous implications to be drawn from this, the consequence I wish to focus upon here, is the result that methodological reasoning in economics must be taken seriously and recognised as indispensable after all.

It is not, I think, contentious to observe that explicit methodological analysis and commentary are widely frowned upon in contemporary economics, especially by those working in the mainstream. Perhaps the most pervasive manner of discouraging it is the perpetual repetition of wise sayings of the form `don't think about it just do it'; or `methodologists are crazy' or `those who can do economics while those cannot do methodology'. An effective restraint on methodology, of course, is the clear reluctance of mainstream journals to publish much of it. Also significant is the apparent refusal of many central research funding authorities to promote it. In the UK, for example, the training currently provided and recommended for economics student tends to be more or less devoid of any explicit methodological content. A quick run through the latest Economic and Social Research Council Guidelines for Post Graduate Training, for example, reveals that, while twenty subject guidelines are provided, economics is one of only two disciplines (the other being `town planning') that do not include an implicit section detailing the need for some form of formal training in the `philosophy of the social sciences' or something similar.

Of course, the phenomenon of the discouragement of methodology is not a uniform one; there are exceptions even within the contemporary mainstream. Moreover, this opposition to methodology is not (and could hardly be) a coherent or consistent one. Not only do those who oppose methodology most vociferously unavoidably fell back upon it, albeit often only implicitly, in their own substantive contributions, but every now and again, even if mainly in coffee-room discussions or local seminars, they can be found putting forward arguments and defending positions that can only be described as overtly methodological/philosophical. From my own institution, for example, Frank Hahn has both published on methodology (see for example Hahn, 1984, 1985) and frequently entered into local methodological debate. Yet, his official position has long been one of opposition to training or study in such matters. Thus when, for example, in the July 1992 issue of the Royal Economic Society Newsletter, Backhouse puts the question: "Should we ignore methodology?', the heading of a response by Hahn is `Answer to Backhouse: Yes'. The interchange that follows is itself a response to a contribution by Hahn in the earlier, April 1992, Newsletter whereby, on the occasion of his retirement from Cambridge, Hahn offers various `reflections' which take the form of advice to young economists. Notably these include the recommendation to "avoid discussion of `mathematics in economics' like the plague", and [as if unrelated] to "give no thought at all to methodology". The point, though, is that this hostility to methodology, whether or not it is uniform or consistent, is undoubtedly pervasive and consequential within contemporary economics. The question I want to address here is why it should arise at all?

Now anything like a complete explanation of the noted phenomenon would, of course, be complex. Just as the fall of the autumn leaf is governed by numerous causal forces so the dismissive attitude to methodology that is found in contemporary economics will be the product of numerous influences. No doubt these include ideological concerns, psychological motives, merely defensive responses though fear, or dislike, of criticism, the lack of any philosophical training in, and sheer ignorance of, related matters, and so on. These, in my experience, are the sorts of explanations usually suggested when the question is raised at all.

I suspect, however, that there must be something more than these influences that is fundamental to the noted phenomenon; something that either acts in addition to them or is crucial to determining the way in which they operate. For such factors by themselves, I think, cannot account for the manner in which methodology is discouraged within the contemporary discipline. Orthodox economists do not just discourage methodology, they do so explicitly and boldly. They do not so much neglect the topic (as, say, they tend to neglect real world structures and abuses of power, widespread wars, famines and other miseries, social decline, etc.,) they boldly assert that any engagement in methodology is a waste of time. Moreover, they do so without much explicit or cogent argument. Of course, and as already noted, there are exceptions - at least at the level of joining the discussion. But even here the most that tends to be offered by way of argument are rather mundane, merely bland, assertions. It is as if the antagonists hardly feel it is worth bothering to think about the question anyway. Bruce Caldwell (1990, p. 64 - and see also 1993, p 45) records a similar observation.

One partially valid point that dissuaders such as Hahn do make, perhaps, is that much methodological discussion within economics has proven ex post to be largely unfruitful. Or at least this observation is valid, I think, with respect to those few methodological discussions that are prominent and well known. These turn on such issues as the relevance of, or limits to, falsificationism in econometrics, the relative merits of induction versus deduction in economic reasoning generally, the validity of Friedman's claims that `economic models' or `assumptions' do not have to be realistic, and so on. But if such ex post assessments of certain methodological contributions do contain insight, the widespread and more restrictive a priori claim that methodology cannot bear fruit, as we shall see below, is not one that thereby follows, nor one that has any validity at all. It is merely a claim, to repeat, that is never really argued but asserted.

Now it does not follow, of course, that because the noted opposition to methodology, or at least that emanating from the contemporary mainstream, is not explicitly argued for or grounded that it must thereby be arbitrary. Do we not, all of us, make judgments in situations where we are not immediately able to articulate the grounds of our judgments, although we nevertheless believe them, and frequently find them to be, correct? When someone new to us appears on the scene do we not quickly form impressions - as to whether the person is trustworthy, threatening or interesting? When someone close to us arrives are we not often able to recognise immediately when something is wrong, or something significant is afoot? When we glance at a text do we not frequently know straightaway whether or not it is to our taste? When a very young child of our own attempts to express herself or himself are we not often able to understand the message immediately even if, to a stranger, the message is not clear at all? In each such case, I think, we make judgements where we might not be able easily to explain the processes of doing so, to justify easily the conclusions drawn. This is not to say, of course, that, with reflection, we could not become discursively aware of the experiences and tacit knowledge, etc., upon which our inferences are grounded. But we do not usually so render our grounds explicit. In each such case judgements are made that resonate with our general, including tacit, beliefs and experiences. We decide intuitively, on the basis of many things that we take as grounded, that `such and such must be so'. This, I think, is the case with the mainstream rejection of matters of methodology. It is not, I suspect, that in failing to articulate cogent arguments such economists are necessarily being arbitrary or randomly discriminatory. Rather, to such people the dismissal of methodology appears to be a matter of common sense, an intuition that lies naturally with more generally held belief systems and mentalities. In consequence, the dismissal takes on the appearance of being philosophically neutral - merely a common sense attitude for an economist, at one with the project of everyday economics, and well captured in such noted quips as `don't think about it just get on with it'.

In short, the phenomenon to be explained here, or so it seems to me, is not merely a hostility to methodology amongst (especially mainstream) economists, but one that is expressed with surprising explicitness, is hardly argued for, but asserted with confidence none the less - as if a matter of everyday scientific common sense. This, I believe, is the nature of the phenomenon that I am here concerned to address.

Now, in truth, the puzzle to raise at the outset is not how it is that methodological inquiry might be considered of consequence, but rather how such critical inquiry could ever be regarded as necessarily inconsequential to a science or discipline of study and research such as economics. If methodology is understood as, or to include, the study of the procedures, practices and aims of a particular discipline and the manner in which it is organised, by what reasoning is it supposed that such study be rejected as necessarily irrelevant to progress in economics? If methodology is characteristically concerned with assessing self-interpretations and claims to scientificity by economists of whatever tradition, on what basis can any such assessments be automatically disregarded as inconsequential or without benefit? If, in the manner of Locke, we look upon methodology/philosophy as, in effect, the practice of under-labouring for science, removing, metaphorically, some of the rubbish that lies in the path to scientific knowledge, by what criterion is it supposed that such ground work is unnecessary or unhelpful in contemporary economics?

Once such questions are posed it is difficult to avoid concluding that any rejection of methodological inquiry rests ultimately upon the belief that the state of economics, its aims, organisation and practices, etc., are beyond reproach, or at least any conceivable improvement. But if this is indeed the presumption, and it is certainly difficult to imagine how otherwise an opposition to methodology could be defended, how could it arise?

An important part of the answer, I shall argue, lies in the very nature of most of contemporary economics. Before elaborating what I take this to be, however, I want to make one initial observation. This is that orthodox economics, the project that many people currently refer to as neoclassical economics, is so dominant a tradition in the academy that, as Gee (1992) has recently emphasized, its adherents do not regard it as a tradition at all but as definitive of what economics is. This situation has at least two consequences of note. The first is that to a mainstream economist anything consistent with the essentials of the orthodox project is going to have the appearance of common sense - rather than a contingently valid and fallible proposition or procedure, etc. Second, few resources are likely to be spent by its practitioners enquiring what the essentials of that project are. It is no wonder, surely, that most attempts to characterise mainstream, orthodox, or `neoclassical' economics have been produced (like this one) from outside of the mainstream tradition.

Now most attempts to characterise mainstream economics have tended to emphasise one or a set of substantive premises as crucial. For example, assumptions of human rationality, claims about the (fantastic) accuracy of the knowledge that people hold, a concern for conceptions of equilibrium, and so on, have all been singled out frequently in this regard. In contrast, my own view is that contemporary orthodox economics must be understood as a project whose essential features turn not upon substantive claims at all, but upon a rootedness in a particular philosophical perspective, one that can be referred to here as positivism. It is this underlying, if implicit, philosophical orientation, I suggest, that limits and influences, the substantive premises that the orthodox project accepts. In addition, I want to argue, it is this same philosophical perspective which, by virtue of its structure, encourages precisely the conclusion that methodology is inconsequential, that it is an unhelpful and dispensable distraction. Clearly, if this interpretation is correct then it is not surprising if the orthodox opposition to methodology rests ultimately upon intuition, if it resonates with everything else that supporters of the mainstream project accept. In consequence, I suggest, the critique of orthodoxy and defense of sustained methodological enquiry must amount to very much the same thing - or at least the latter, if insufficient for, is certainly necessary to, the former. Clearly, there is much more involved in my claim than I can substantiate in any significant detail here. But let me, briefly, sketch the essentials at least of the argument.

What first of all do I mean here by positivism, then, and how are the contentions made above to be grounded? Before answering such questions it is useful, first, to introduce explicitly some terminology that facilitates greatly the discussion that follows. Specifically I want briefly to elaborate the notions of realism and ontology - conceptions that will figure significantly in the arguments developed. Now in a very general sense any position can be designated a (philosophical) realism that asserts the existence of some disputed kind of entity. Some people but not others are, for example, committed to the existence of black holes, utility functions, probabilities, magnetic fields, class relations, etc. Clearly, on this definition we are all realists of a kind, and there are very many conceivable realisms. The question of interest in any context, then, is what kind of realism is at issue? This conception of realism is thus closely bound up with that of ontology, i.e., with the enquiry into the nature of being, of what exists, including the nature of the objects of study. Indeed, it is a forthright concern with ontology, a concern in particular to elaborate the broad nature of, or of features of, natural and social reality that explains, in what follows, the usage of the term realism in labelling the perspectives distinguished.

What then is meant by the perspective of positivism? I refer to a specific version of positivism that is rooted in the writings of Hume - or at least in Hume's arguments as they are most commonly interpreted. Now the version of positivism in question is first of all a theory of knowledge, its nature and limits. Specifically, it is a claim that human knowledge takes the form of sense-experience or impression. Hume encouraged this perspective with his attempted critique of any philosophical account of being, of ontology, with his denying the possibility of establishing the independent existence of things, and specifically of the operation of natural necessity. But of course, and as with Hume himself, it is never possible to dissolve completely any conception of being, of the object of study. For any theory of knowledge must assume, even if only implicitly, that the nature of reality is such that it could be the object of knowledge of the required or specified sort. The Humean theory, clearly, implicitly entails an account of reality as consisting of the objects of experience or impression constituting atomistic events. In other words, an ontology is implicitly presupposed by Humean analysis, but restricted to events of, and so which are effectively constituted in, direct experience or perception. Indeed, because reality is essentially defined as that which is given in experience then, following the practice of referring to the domain of experience as the empirical, I shall, for obvious reasons, follow Kant, Bhaskar and others in referring to the perspective that arises as empirical realism.

Now if particular knowledge is of events sensed in experience then any possibility of general (including scientific) knowledge must be of the constant patterns, if any, that such events reveal in space and over time. On this Humean view, clearly, these are the only form of generalisation conceivable. Such constant event patterns, i.e., regularities of the form `whenever event x then event y', of course, constitute the Humean or positive account of causal laws. If moreover, such constant conjunctions are the only form of general, including scientific, knowledge that is possible then, to the extent that successful science is acknowledged as pervasive, it follows that such constant event conjunctions must also be ubiquitous.

To repeat, any theory of knowledge presupposes an ontology, and in the case of positivism, as noted, this comprises atomistic events and their (supposed ubiquitous) constant conjunctions. But any theory of knowledge also presupposes (in addition to an ontology) a social theory, that is some account of human agency and institutions. For these must be of a form that enables knowledge of the specified type to be produced. Positivism, then, supports a conception of human agents as passive sensors of atomistic events and recorders of their constant conjunctions.

Now I think that there is little doubt that these results have been widely accepted in economics even if it is doubtful that many economists would wish to accept the specific Humean analysis upon which they rest. In particular the Humean scientific image, the conception of science as the search for regularities of the form `whenever event (type) x then event (type) y', can be seen to underpin most contemporary substantive positions - including Frank Hahn's own `pure theorising'. Although the emphasis in the latter is not always on the empirical the deductivism on which it rests presupposes the ubiquity of constant event conjunctions while any lack of immediate empirical content is sustained, when it is, only on a promissory note. Econometrics too is merely a form of deductivism modified to incorporate the probabilistic case. The presupposition is still a real world ubiquity of spontaneous event regularities. The only essential difference is that, in prediction, the hold on the individual case is lost - ie that which is predicted is the average or limit of a series of outcomes, or the prediction of the next event is held with a certain probability, and so on.

It can be noted, moreover, that within contemporary mainstream economics deductivism is never questioned. Its legitimacy and universality are merely assumed to be beyond question. As Frank Hahn (1985, p. 9) says of axiomatic-deductive `theory' in economics:

Now it is not merely the case that these two positivistic results or features - the event regularity conception of science and a social theory based upon the atomistic individual - are widely accepted in contemporary economics; they are, I suggest, definitive of it. Together, they determine both the structure of orthodox analysis as well as its material form. With a bit of reflection (see Lawson, 1994e, 1994g) it can be seen that all of the substantive claims regularly held as characteristic of orthodoxy - for example its stress upon rationality, concern for notions of equilibrium, assumptions about knowledge, emphasis upon exchange activities (rather than production or distribution), etc., - can be shown to be rooted in one or both of these positivistic results. At the same time when the supposedly characteristic substantive claims of orthodoxy are in fact relaxed (e.g., when the hypothesis of rationality is replaced by an assumption that agents follow fixed context-independent rules, or conceptions of equilibrium are replaced by other `solution concepts', etc., - see Lawson, 1994g), the alternative assumptions entertained remain consistent with the two positivistic results elaborated above. For such reasons I suggest that these two results, along with the positivistic perspective from which they derive, be recognised as essentially definitive of the orthodox project. Certainly, I know of no other interpretation that can account for the sweep of orthodox analysis so readily.

What is there to be said, however, about the contemporary orthodox dismissive attitude towards methodology? In particular, why do I suggest that such an attitude is encouraged by the positivist perspective which, I am arguing, underpins the contemporary economic orthodoxy? Now any theory of knowledge presupposes not only a theory of ontology and a social theory but also some philosophical method, some account of how its characteristic results are achieved. In positivism, because experience is effectively constitutive of the world (only what we experience exists) it is in consequence held to be certain. Science, then, is viewed as monistic, the accumulation of incorrigible facts. Even the reported constant event conjunctions are held to be perceivable via impression and, in consequence, constitute facts. A result, clearly, is that the incorrigibility of knowledge in positivism serves ultimately, if implicitly, to undermine the possibility of substantive scientific criticism. And the upshot, of course, is a conservative ideology which serves to rationalise contemporary orthodox practice, i.e., the status quo, a perspective notoriously expressed within positivism itself precisely as a generalised denial of the usefulness of methodology/philosophy.

It may, indeed, have been the desire to produce precisely this sort of result - i.e., that scientific knowledge is effectively secure or beyond criticism - that motivated Hume's study in the first place. In the light of the spectacular scientific successes of the Enlightment, including those of Newton in particular, science must have seemed secure. It is feasible then that the task of philosophy as it appeared to Hume was to indicate what must be the case for secure or justified knowledge to arise. In any case, the incorrigibility of knowledge and impotence of methodology to science is a conclusion encouraged by the Humean perspective.

In summary, given the extent to which contemporary mainstream economics turns on the noted results that derive from positivism - its image of, or ideal for, science and its conception of the human agent - there are, I think, clear grounds for supporting the claim that mainstream economics is a project that is rooted in this philosophical perspective. Given, in turn, the noted dismissive attitude to methodology that can derive support from this philosophical perspective, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the prevalence of this attitude in contemporary mainstream economics obtains significant encouragement in precisely this way - whether by intuition, resonance, or discursive reasoning of some kind - via the rootedness of that economics project in the philosophical perspective in question. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how else mainstream economists could come to convince themselves that their anti-methodological stance is justified. It is this philosophical position of positivism, then, that I want to criticize next and, in so doing, to elaborate an alternative, more explanatory adequate, perspective to put in its place.

I have argued that any orthodox conclusion to the effect that methodology/philosophy is necessarily dispensable to economics derives from an acceptance of certain general results of a specific version of positivism. Now I do not want to suggest that this denial of any role for methodology is ultimately sustainable even within positivism. Indeed, this latter perspective is sufficiently incoherent that all sorts of inconsistent conclusions can be generated. The point here, though, is that any plausibility or encouragement for the rejection of methodology by contemporary mainstream economists appears necessarily to derive from the rootedness of the orthodox project in the positivist perspective. And the way in which it is achieved within positivism, clearly, is via a two step reduction: of reality to events, and (in effect) of events to experience. It is significant, then, that from the alternative perspective that I now want to elaborate and defend, a perspective that can (for reasons that will become clear below) be stylised as transcendental realism, both steps of this reduction are explicitly rejected as untenable.

According to transcendental realism the world is conceived first of all as constituted not only by phenomena interpretable as events and states of affairs and our impression or experience of them but also by (possibly irreducible) structures, mechanisms, powers and tendencies that, although perhaps are not directly observable, nevertheless do underlie actual events and govern or produce them. Thus, not only does the autumn leaf pass to the ground, and not only do we experience it as falling, but, according to this perspective, underlying such movement and governing it are real mechanisms such as gravity. Similarly the world is composed not only of such `surface phenomena' as skin spots, puppies turning into dogs, and relatively slow productivity growth in the UK, but also of underlying and governing structures or mechanisms such as, respectively, viruses, genetic codes and the British system of industrial relations. In short, three domains of reality are, on this perspective, distinguished, namely the empirical (experience and impression), the actual (events and states of affairs - ie the actual objects of direct experience) and the non-actual or, metaphorically, the `deep' (structures, mechanisms, powers and tendencies).

Now not only is it the case that these domains are ontologically distinct, according to transcendental realism, but in addition, and crucially, they are unsynchronised, or out of phase as it were, with one another. Thus, while experience is out of phase with events, allowing the possibility of contrasting, as well as revisions to, experience of a given event, so events are typically unsynchronised with the mechanisms that govern them. On the latter structure/event non-correspondence, for example, autumn leaves are not in phase with the action of gravity for the reason that they are also subject to aerodynamic, thermodynamic and other forces or mechanisms. Events, in other words, are multiply determined by various, perhaps countervailing, factors so that the governing causes, though necessarily `appearing' through, or in, events, can rarely be read straight off.

Transcendental realism differs from empirical realism, then, in viewing the world as composed, in part, of objects that are structured and, to adopt Bhaskar's term, intransitive - structured in the sense of being irreducible to the events of experience, intransitive in the sense of existing and acting independently of their identification. Put differently, from the transcendental realist perspective empirical realism involves a series of closely related philosophical mistakes of which two stand out as crucial. The first lies in the use of the category of experience to define the world. This entails giving an epistemological category an ontological task and in doing so commits in a particular way a general error that Bhaskar refers to as the `epistemic fallacy'. The `fallacy' consists in the view that statements about being can be reduced to, or analysed solely in terms of, statements about knowledge, that matters of ontology can always be translated into epistemological terms. The second error consists in the view that its being experienced, or being open to possible experience, is an essential feature of reality, as opposed to an accidental property of some things or phenomena. Empirical realism, then, neglects, if amongst other things, the causal criterion of existence, acknowledging as real only what is directly experienced. One significant consequence of these `errors', it will be argued below, is an inevitable failure or inability to distinguish the conditions under which experience is in fact significant to science.

Now if the empirical realist ontology is found to be an implicit presupposition of the Humean account of knowledge, what sort of account of knowledge follows from sustaining the transcendental realist ontology in its place? Clearly the aim of knowledge and specifically of science is no longer primarily that of elaborating constant event conjunctions. Indeed, knowledge and science, from this perspective, are seen to be concerned primarily not with elaborating events at all but with identifying and illuminating the structures and mechanisms that are irreducible to, but which underlie and govern, the phenomena of experience. And it is precisely the identification and illumination of structures and mechanisms that govern some phenomenon of interest that, from the transcendental realist perspective, constitutes an explanation - an explanation of the phenomenon in question.

Note also that these alternative conceptions of science and explanation entail contrasting modes of inference. For those economists who, despite everything, endeavour to engage openly in methodological analysis, empirical realism, with its focus upon generalisations about conjunctions of events, facilitates, at most, a discussion concerning the relative advantages and limitations of methods of induction versus those of deduction - a discussion which, in practice has taken the form of debates about the usefulness/limitations of falsificationism in economics, the instrumental value of unrealistic models, etc. Indeed, it is the inherent limitations of such discussion, of course, that has encouraged in turn the ex posteriori view, expressed by Hahn amongst others, and noted above, that methodological analysis has in fact got the subject nowhere. It is important to recognise, then, that the essential mode of inference presupposed by the transcendental realist perspective is neither induction nor deduction but one that can be styled retroduction or abduction or `as if' reasoning. It consists in the movement (on the basis of analogy and metaphor amongst other things) from a conception of some phenomenon of interest to a conception of some totally different type of thing, mechanism, structure or condition that is responsible for the given phenomenon. If deduction is, for example, to move from the general claim that `all ravens are black' to the particular inference that the next one seen will be black, and induction is to move from the particular observation of numerous black ravens to the general claim that `all ravens are black', retroductive or abductive reasoning is to move from the observation of numerous black ravens to a theory of a mechanism intrinsic to ravens which disposes them being black. It is a movement, paradigmatically, from a `surface phenomenon' to some `deeper' causal thing.

If, then, the aim of science according to the transcendental realist perspective is to illuminate structures that govern surface phenomena it follows that laws, or law-statements, must express not event regularities but precisely such structures and their modes of activity. And if, moreover, with the activity of any structure rarely precisely manifest in events we refer to this activity as a tendency rather than an actuality it is necessary to be clear what exactly this ambiguous term is intended to designate. It should be apparent that a statement of a tendency is not a counterfactual statement about events, nor even a claim concerning long-run or average, etc., outcomes at the level of events. Indeed, it is not a claim about events at all. Rather it is a transfactual statement about a structure or thing and its activity. It is not, in other words, a conditional statement about something actual or empirical but an unconditional statement about something non-actual and non-empirical. It is not a statement of logical necessity subject to ceteris paribus restrictions, but a statement of natural necessity without qualifications attached. It is not about events that would occur if things were different but about a power that is being exercised (if triggered) whatever events ensue.

Science then, according to transcendental realism, is concerned with identifying and illuminating structures and events and act independently of the process of their identification. But if this is the aim of science where does our knowledge come from and how does it come about? Clearly, if, as with transcendental realism, an intransitive dimension (i.e., one of objects existing independently of our knowledge of them) is acknowledged it is possible to understand how a changing knowledge of (possibly) unchanging objects is possible. But if the objects of the world are not merely given in (and so effectively constituted through) sense experience, and specifically if structures and mechanisms act independently of their identification, of being known, how does our knowledge of them arise? Where does it come from? Now, if knowledge is not merely given in experience it is hardly intelligible that it is created out of nothing as it were. It must, then, come about through a transformation of pre-existing knowledge-like materials. In other words, it is necessary also to recognise a transitive dimension to knowledge including science, a dimension of transitive objects of knowledge, including facts, observations, theories, hypotheses, guesses, hunches, intuitions, speculations, anomalies, etc., which facilitate, and come to be actively transformed through, the laborious social practice of science. Knowledge, in other words, is a produced means of production (of further knowledge) while science must be recognised as an ongoing transformative social activity. Knowledge is a social product, actively produced by means of antecedent social products - albeit on the basis of a continual engagement, or interaction, with its (intransitive) object. Of course, if this is the nature of knowledge and its mode of production the aim of the knowledge process, or science, remains the production of knowledge of objects which, for the most part, exist and act independently of our, or at least of any individual, knowledge of them. Specifically, the primary aim of science is the production of knowledge of mechanisms that, in combination, produce the phenomena that are actually manifest.

In short, according to transcendental realism, while the objects of knowledge exist and act to a significant extent independently of the knowledge of which they are the objects, the knowledge we possess always consists in historically specific social forms, as items continually transformed in the laborious social process of science. Just as making sense of science necessitates the recognition of an intransitive realm of the objects of investigation, so it requires the acknowledgement of a transitive realm of cognitive objects as well as human social-scientific activities and capabilities.

What implications does all this have for social theory? As noted above all theories of knowledge entail presuppositions about human agents and the institutions via which our knowledge is produced. What implications, then, can be drawn regarding human agency and social institutions once the transcendental realist perspective is in place? This unfortunately is far too large an issue to be explored here (see e.g., Lawson, 1994d, 1994f). However, it can briefly be noted that if knowledge is necessarily to be understood as the product of transformative social activity, this presupposes, if amongst other things, that human beings possess transformative capacities. And if the objects of knowledge are structures and mechanisms that act in conjunction with others and are not precisely manifest in events, then the fact of scientific successes entails that the institutions of science and capabilities of scientists are such that the underlying structures on occasion can be identified. One possibility here which, as we shall see below, is actualised in, for example, situations of experimental control is that human capabilities and institutions are of a kind that facilitate forms of intervention in, or the manipulation of aspects of, reality, so that the latter may be more readily assessed/revealed. From this transcendental realist perspective, then and in contrast to the Humean reduction of knowledge to impression, it is possible to render intelligible the existence and reproduction of both scientific institutions including laboratories and processes of training, as well as scientific activity and in particular scientific work.

From the transcendental realist account elaborated, then, conceptions of human agency, natural and social reality, the nature of and possibilities for knowledge, and the methods by which knowledge is produced, are significantly different from those that derive from the Humean perspective and which have been found to underpin much of contemporary economics. In addition, and the central point to emphasise here, it can be seen that grounds have been removed from any argument that attempts to sustain an a priori denial of a role for methodology. In particular, knowledge is not considered to be fused with its objects but is always but a fallible and corrigible expression of it - subject to continuous revision. And because science is no longer viewed as merely passive behaviour but a process of work, it must be recognised too as a sometimes more and sometimes less justified social practice/activity. From the perspective opened up, clearly, there is always the potential for informed criticism of scientific theories, modes of reasoning, practices and the manner of organisation of any science; the potential for methodology in economics, in short, is undeniable. The question yet to be addressed however is whether the philosophical perspective in question can be shown to be sustainable.

How, then, is it possible to choose between the empirical and transcendental realist perspectives including their contrasting accounts of knowledge and scientific objectives? In fact the inadequacy of the constant conjunction conception of science compared to the transcendental realist alternative becomes immediately apparent once we ask the question: under what conditions are the sought after event regularities of Humean science actually obtained?

Consider first of all the situation in the natural sciences and specifically two observations whose relevance has been well brought out by Bhaskar. The first of these is that, outside astronomy at least, most of the constant event conjunctions that are held as significant, as laws, only in fact occur under the restricted conditions of experimental control — i.e., they are not typically spontaneous occurring. The second observation is that the results or `laws' supported in controlled experimental activity are nevertheless frequently successfully applied outside of the experimental situation.

Now these observations raise certain problems for Humean accounts which tie laws to constant conjunctions of events. For, if scientific laws, or significant results, only occur in such restricted conditions as experimental set-ups then this bears the rather constricting implication that science and its results, far from being universal, are effectively fenced off from most of the goings - on in the world. In other words, most of the accepted results of science are not of the form `whenever event x then event y always follows' after all, but are of the form `whenever event x then event y always follows, as long as conditions E hold', where conditions E typically amount to a specification of the experimental situation. This situation also bears the rather counter-intuitive implication that any actual regularity of events that a law of nature supposedly denotes does not, in fact, generally occur independently of human intervention. In addition to such problems, moreover, and as serious, the constant conjunction view of laws leaves the question of what governs events outside of experimental situations not only unanswered but completely unaddressed. In doing so it also leaves the observation that experimentally obtained results are successfully applied outside experimental situations without any valid explanation.

In order to render Bhaskar's observations intelligible it is necessary to abandon the view that the generalisations of nature consist of empirical regularities and to accept instead the transcendental realist account of the objects of the world, including of science, as intransitive and structured. That is, experimental activity and results, and the applications of experimentally determined knowledge outside of experimental situations, can be accommodated only through invoking the transcendental realist ontology of generative structures, powers, mechanisms and necessary relations, etc., that lie behind and govern the flux of events in an essentially open world. The fall of an autumn leaf, for example, and as already noted, does not typically conform to an empirical regularity, and precisely because it is governed, in complex ways, by the actions of different juxtaposed and counteracting mechanisms. Not only is the path of the leaf governed by gravitational pull, but also by aerodynamic, thermal, inertial and other mechanisms. On this transcendental realist view, then, experimental activity can be explained as an attempt to intervene in order to close the system, in order, in other words, to isolate a particular mechanism of interest by holding off all other potentially counteracting mechanisms. The aim is to engineer a closed system in which a one-to-one correspondence can obtain between the way a mechanism acts and the events that eventually ensue. In other words, on this view, experimental activity can be rendered intelligible not as creating the rare situation in which an empirical law is put into effect but as intervening in order to bring about those special circumstance under which a non-empirical law, a power, a tendency, or way of acting of some mechanism, etc., can be empirically identified. The law itself, of course, is always operative - if the triggering conditions hold, the mechanism is activated whatever else is going on. On this transcendental realist view, for example, a leaf is subject to the gravitational tendency even as I hold it in the palm of my hand. Through this sort of reasoning, then, transcendental realism can render intelligible the application of scientific knowledge outside of experimental situations. The context or milieu under which any mechanism will be operative is irrelevant to the law's specification. Once activated the mechanism is operative whatever empirical pattern ensues.

In short, although the traditional conception of science is the seeking of constant conjunctions of events, in practice such event regularities that have been elaborated have been restricted in the main to situations of experimental control. Transcendental realism, unlike empirical realism can render this situation intelligible. And it follows from the transcendental realist perspective that the traditional Humean conception rests upon an inadequate analysis and illegitimate generalisation of what emerges as a special case — wherein a single and stable (set of) aspect(s) or mechanism(s) is physically isolated and thereby empirically identified.

Now a premise of the above argument was the observation that outside astronomy universal event regularities are only forthcoming in situations of experimental control. But what about astronomy, and specifically the celestial closure so successfully utilized by Newton? Surely the fact, as well as the spectacular nature, of this particular closure is sufficient to justify the Humean insistence on the actuality of causal laws? This is not so. First of all it is possible from (and currently perhaps only from) the transcendental realist perspective to provide an explanation of the celestial closure - that it arises because of rather peculiar conditions that hold in the case of the planets, in that both their intrinsic states as well as the extrinsic forces acting upon them are essentially constant, at least over the time period with which most people are usually concerned, i.e., over human life-spans. Properly interpreted, Newtonian mechanics posits theories of how bodies (tend to) act, and, for this science, celestial phenomena function merely as evidence of the postulated tendencies. Thus, if the intrinsic or extrinsic states of the planets in our solar system were not so stable but were to change in some way - perhaps a massive meteorite were to pass through the solar system - then such a mechanics would entail a consequent disruption of the familiar celestial phenomenal patterns. There is no problem in all this for transcendental realism. Second, and just as much to the point, it must be recognised that despite its spectacular nature, this closure, as a spontaneous phenomenon, represents a relatively rare situation. Indeed, it is no doubt precisely the spectacular nature of the celestial closure that, at least in some part, accounts for a general failure from Laplace onwards to realise that the situation is relatively uncommon - a failure to appreciate that the celestial closure is far from being indicative of the phenomenal situation that can be expected to prevail more or less everywhere. And this failure, in turn, appears to be largely responsible for the widespread, if tacit, acceptance, formerly in philosophy, and currently in the social sciences in particular, of the ubiquity of constant conjunctions of events in nature, and thus of the doctrine of the actuality of `causal' laws.

It will not have gone unnoticed that most of the discussion on this point has referred to the situation in the `natural' sciences. However, it is not difficult to reason that the transcendental realist perspective must carry over to the social realm. To see this it is necessary only to consider two often noted problems of contemporary economics. The first is that significant event regularities of the sought after kind have yet to be turned up in the social realm. The second is that many economists appear to share the intuition that human agents possess the capacity of real choice even if these same economists are unable to reconcile this insight with their understanding of scientific explanation. Now if choice is real any agent could always have done otherwise, each agent could always have acted differently than he or she in fact did. And a necessary condition for this, clearly, is that the world, social as well as natural, is open in the sense that events really could have been different. Put differently if under conditions x an agent chose in fact to do y it is the case that this same agent could really instead have done not y. Choice to repeat presupposes that the world is open and actual events need not have been. But the possibility of choice not only presupposes that events could have been different. It also entails that agents have some conception of what they are doing and wanting to achieve in their activity. That is, if choice is real then human actions must be intentional under some description. And intentionality in turn is bound up with knowledgeability. For agents must have knowledge at least of the conditions that render their intended acts, when they are, as feasible. In turn again, of course, knowledge presupposes sufficient endurability in the objects of knowledge to facilitate their coming to be known. Now if event regularities, or at least significant ones, do not, as widely reported, generally occur in the social realm then the enduring objects of knowledge must then lie at a different level - at that of structures which govern, but which are irreducible to, events, including human activities, of experience.

At a very general level, then, the transcendental realist ontology carries over to the social realm. Now in the natural realm it was observed that constant event conjunctions appear to be occurring (at least outside astronomy) only in conditions of experimental control. Of course the feasibility of experimental control in the social realm is rather limited. Are there, then, any grounds for expecting significant constant event conjunctions to be a feature of the social domain? Now if natural and social realms are similar in that both are characterized by structures underlying the events of experience they are dissimilar in that social, unlike natural, structures depend for their existence of human agency. If the human race were to disappear so too would the social structures on which they depend. Human agency and social structure then presuppose each other. Neither can be reduced to, identified with, or explained completely in terms of, for each requires, the other. And the simple point that warrants emphasis here is that because social structure is human agent-dependent it is only ever manifest in human activity. Thus, given the open nature of human action, the fact that any agent could always have acted otherwise, it follows that social structure can only be present in an open system. In consequence, it would seem, any economic laws must usually be manifest merely as tendencies and only rarely - usually in cases where they are consciously brought about (e.g., the occurrence of annual holidays) - as empirical regularities, so that the Humean project in it economic guise must, certainly as a general approach, be recognised as quite misguided.

Now in the light of suspicion recently voiced in economics (e.g., Weintraub, 1989) that methodological or philosophical commentaries claim, or erroneously rest upon, some foundationalist or externalist stance, it is essential to be clear that no such position is presupposed here. Let me, though, spell out what the nature of the argument is, and what is, and is not, being (and can, and can not, be) claimed with regards to the status of the results being supported. To this end it is worthwhile emphasising just how the aim of the transcendental realist project differs from that of the programme initiated by Hume.

Hume's programme, as noted above, in fact appears most intelligible as an attempt to demonstrate that, or how, existing knowledge is justified. It was produced of an age which believed in scientific certainty. Eventually, of course, the idea of scientific certainty, so fundamental to the Humean project, collapsed. However, to the extent that this has been acknowledged within economics, the absence of a clear or explicit elaboration of an ontological dimension or, more precisely, a domain of intransitive objects existing at least in part independent of our knowledge of them yet expressible (fallibly) within knowledge, encourages, typically, some kind of voluntaristic dualism. That is, it encourages a view whereby our beliefs, because no longer regarded as being determined by the world, are interpreted as completely cut off from it, as free creations of the mind, or as taking the form merely of rhetoric, or some similar such thing (on all this see below). It is significant here, then, to appreciate that transcendental realism starts out neither by taking general scientific knowledge to be certain nor by neglecting a realm of knowable intransitive objects. Instead of inquiring what science, or the knowledge process, must be like for general knowledge to be justified the alternative question put is what `must' the world, or aspects of it, be like for recognised scientific, amongst other social, practices and human capabilities etc., to be possible? In this, the form of argument or reasoning involved, of course, is that species of retroduction which, following Kant, can be referred to as transcendental - thus explaining the use of this term in the label of the perspective formulated. That is, the insights obtained, the support for the transcendental realist perspective sustained, have resulted from an analysis taking the form of an inquiry into the conditions of the possibility of certain especially significant generalised scientific practices and human capabilities that are experienced - scientific experimental practices in the natural realm as well as the capacity of human intentionality and choice in the social.

Now if the mode of reasoning employed here is basically Kantian it warrants emphasis that Kant's project, in various respects, has not been accepted precisely. First, there has been no attempt to adopt Kant's idealist and individualist mode wherein such reasoning is directed only to informing us about ourselves. Second, it is necessary to recognise that the premises of transcendental argument are always contestable, never indubitable. Of course, the actual premises emphasised (concerning experimental practices and results, and the nature of human agency) are chosen because, if amongst other things, at the present stage of knowledge they appear reasonable secure. But knowledge is always fallible, and by accepting premises such as these, or others, the realist cannot avoid siding with, for example, current conceptions of scientific practices and other relevant features of experience. But this merely means that the philosophical, or metatheoretical, moment of analysis which this reasoning represents is not above or outside, it cannot be divorced from, substantive scientific research. It deals with the same reality. Of course, merely by starting the analysis with premises concerning natural scientific practices, there may already be a siding with science against religion, magic, and so on, at least to the extent that activities or presuppositions are incompatible. Third, the transcendental argument to claims of `necessity' (in this case to the acceptance of the ontology of causal structures powers, tendencies, and generative mechanisms, etc) is, like all cognitive claims, also fallible and corrigible.

The upshot, then, is that the transcendental realist perspective, even with respect to the experimental sciences, cannot be conclusively established via this sort of reasoning. The results obtained are provisional, not a novel species of foundationalism. If, following Kant, they are regarded as a priori, this cannot be so understood in any absolute manner; merely in the sense of explaining the possibility of some other forms of knowledge. In short, the results obtained must be recognised as conditional and hypothetical.

Nevertheless, these considerations by no means undermine the realist project being defended here. While the premises adopted to initiate the transcendental arguments do seem secure from the standpoint of current experience it is difficult to conceive of any rival account of science, or of any conception of the way the natural and social world is, that can accommodate the relevant features of our experience so well, or even at all. Moreover, the transcendental realist case is bolstered, and fear of arbitrariness in the choice of premises diminished, when it is realised that the premises chosen as starting points for the transcendental argument are not only secure from the standpoint of current understandings but actually constitute central features of those accounts that, arguably, are most opposed to the theory of transcendental realism being supported here - empiricism in the natural and social sciences and rationalistic orthodox `pure theory' in economics. Thus, while Flew (1979), for example, in his dictionary of philosophy entry on empiricism observes that "one common feature has been the tendency to start from experimental sciences as a kind of prototype or paradigm case of human knowledge ... [with] ... the acquisition of knowledge ... limited by the possibility of experiment" (p 105), orthodox or mainstream economics often even stylises itself, if misleadingly, as the science of human choice and intentionality. Presumably, if the intelligibility of essential features of positions and perspectives most clearly opposed to transcendental realism actually appears to presuppose, or warrant something like, the transcendental realist account of nature, science and human capabilities here defended, then transcendental realism can be regarded as that much more secure.

My intention here has been primarily to argue against, that is to indicate the erroneous basis of, the widespread denigration of methodology within contemporary mainstream economics. The argument sustained is that this orthodox rejection of methodology is, like the other characteristic premises of contemporary orthodox economics, rooted in certain erroneous results of the philosophical perspective of positivism. Once the more explanatory adequate account of transcendental realism is accepted, however, and in particular a knowable realm of intransitive objects of science is accepted, the potential for scientific and methodological criticism and insight becomes undeniable (and the relevance of contemporary mainstream economics as a whole questionable).

Now for the sake of completeness I should also briefly mention something of recent `post-`modernist' or `pragmatist' variants (see e.g., McCloskey, 1986; Weintraub, 1989) on this anti-methodology theme - variants supposedly derived from an anti-positivist (or `anti-modernist') position though which, I think, are better characterised as simple displacements, inversions, or reformulations of it. The starting point for such formulations, at least in the philosophy of science context, is, typically, a recognition that science is not in fact monistic in its development; its results cannot be regarded as certain or always justified. Instead science is acknowledged as being characterized by change and discontinuity rather than the accumulation of incorrigible facts. But if this break with the assumption of certainty in knowledge is interpreted as an explicit reaction to positivism, the latter's enduring influence is nevertheless manifest in a lack of any explicit elaboration of matters of ontology. The outcome encouraged, in other words, is some form of purely voluntaristic dualism. That is, with knowledge no longer regarded as completely determined by, or fused with, reality it is conceptualised instead as completely cut off from it - as mere conceptions, or free creations of the mind, or conversation, and so on. Put differently, through challenging certain versions of identity - thinking in science (knowledge and its object) and through `deconstructing' particular notions of truth (naive correspondence) and of progress (fact accumulation) post-modernism goes into overdrive as it were and rejects the very possibility of objectivity or making reference in knowledge/discourse. The philosophical outcome so achieved in effect tends towards a total relativism: it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that theories are merely narratives that we choose according to our own purely personal criteria. Being is reduced to conversation or some such; what is, is reduced to what is being said. In short, the usual positivistic reduction of reality to facts given in experience is transposed to a subjectivist key wherein society is reduced to meanings or interpretations, etc., given in conversation. And a result, amongst many others, of course, is that because science seemingly loses any possibility of critical engagement with any extra-linguistic reality there can be no scope in science for methodology broadly conceived. For if, as with Hume, the presumed certainty of science entails that there is little need for methodology then the supposed impossibility of rational (ontological) assessment of scientific theories as in post-modernism entails that there is little point to it.

Needless to say the error of post-modernism, as with Hume's account, arises from some committal of the epistemic fallacy, albeit possibly in some modified, frequently linguistic, form. And as with Hume once more any denial or neglect of a philosophical ontology results in the generation of an implicit one. What, after all, is presupposed by the existence of language, text, etc., if it is not the structures, relations, rules, positions and practices, etc., that constitute the knowable features of social reality; aspects which, though dependent upon language, are also necessary for, as well as irreducible to, it? What, moreover, is the conversation about? Even if the answer to the latter question is that it is only about conversation, this immediately introduces a distinction between conversation as a transitive process and conversation as its intransitive object. If, as tends to be the case in economics, it is admitted that the conversation is somehow poorly formulated or inadequately understood then conversation is clearly acknowledged as an intransitive object, and the scope for methodology is seen explicitly to re-emerge after all.

Of course, essentially the same argument can be made more generally with respect to the noted starting point of most such post-modernist positions - the acknowledgement of change and discontinuity in science. For clearly a condition of the intelligibility of scientific discontinuity and change is a recognition of both, and an acknowledgement of a distinction between, an intransitive dimension of objects of knowledge existing independently of our knowledge of them, and a transitive realm of changing cognitive objects produced and reproduced within science through scientific social practice. That is, a recognition of the fact of scientific discontinuity and change entails that a) thought can no longer be regarded as a mechanical function of given objects - as in empiricism; and also that b) creative subjects can no longer be viewed as constituting a world of things - as in idealism including its post-modernist variants. Making sense of scientific change and development entails the recognition of a distinction between (relatively) unchanging real objects which exist outside (at lease in the natural realm), and which endure relatively independently, of the scientific process and the changing cognitive items produced within science as a function and result of its practice.

A precondition of the discontinuities and change in science that has led to the recent and multifarious reactions to positivism, then, is that both intransitive and transitive realms be acknowledged in science and philosophy. And once this is recognised then a consequence, of course, is that methodology must once more be regarded as indispensable. In short, if scientific knowledge can no longer be regarded as a natural product of the world, as something above criticism as in empiricism, nor can it be interpreted as the mere creation of any individual, as something beyond criticism, as in post modernism. Rather it is a social product irreducible to its intransitive objects and yet susceptible to examination and re-examination, transformation and criticism in the light of its adequacy in expressing those features of reality in question. Whatever else follows from this it is not that methodology is impossible or non-efficacious. To the contrary it is practically indispensable.

Let us take stock. It has been argued that the belief, seemingly widely held within economics, that philosophical/methodological reasoning has been and must be unhelpful to the discipline arises from a misplaced trust in results rooted in (or derived via a sideways displacement of) the philosophical perspective of (a version of) positivism. More specifically it is the attempted dismissal of, or at least failure to elaborate in any clear way, a domain of intransitive objects of knowledge, an orientation encouraged by Hume, that underpins this complacent, anti-critical, position. For, without a clear conception of an object of analysis that is both knowable and existing independently of (at least prior to) the analysis, scientific criticism becomes unintelligible and philosophical criticism of scientific practice impossible. Philosophical reflection, including methodology,can then serve no end other than, through self denial, perpetuating the status quo.

Positivism, whether in pure or displaced form, however, is not mandatory. Indeed, it has been shown here how transcendental realism provides a more adequate, more explanatorily powerful, perspective. And from the perspective so opened up it is apparent how philosophical/methodological reasoning can play a potentially insightful role as a necessary complement to, or essential moment in, science. Indeed, once the transcendental realist perspective is accepted numerous questions and issues warranting inquiry of a methodological/philosophical kind are immediately apparent. For example, if experimental control is rarely feasible in the social realm, how are social structures to be identified? If science does not, after all, turn upon the existence/elaboration of constant conjunctions of events, so that the pervasive successes of the former no longer testify to the ubiquity of the latter, under what conditions if any can constant conjunctions of events be generated/anticipated (i.e., under what conditions can the deductive/inductive methods of contemporary mainstream economics be legitimately applied)? If human choice is real in the sense that an agent could always have acted otherwise, what form does social scientific explanation, if it is possible at all, take? If social structures depend upon human conceptions so that the processes of revealing them may, by transforming our concepts of, also come to transform, them, what qualification must be appended to the insight that such objects constitute intransitive objects of inquiry? If structures are concept and practice dependent and so, in consequence, intrinsically dynamic as well as historically contingent and geographically located, what implications follow concerning any social theorising that aims to express them?

These questions and others constitute the sorts of issues that are addressed within the realist project (see for example Lawson, 1994a, 19934, 1994f). Needless to say it is not possible to elaborate upon them here. The point to be made though, and it warrants emphasis, is that positivism cannot begin to address the sorts of issues listed. Indeed, only when positivism, with its presuppositions of incorrigible observations or facts, of a ubiquity of spontaneous constant event conjunctions, and of agents as passive automata, etc., is abandoned can such methodological/philosophical questions even be meaningfully posed.

Now if from the transcendental perspective elaborated it is clear that methodological/philosophical inquiry is indispensable to science including economics, it must also be acknowledged that such inquiry is but a step in the process of science and a fallible one at that. Its task, as noted at the outset is, metaphorically speaking, ground-clearing: under-labouring for science, clearing the rubbish that lies in the path of substantive knowledge. As such methodology, even if very broadly understood, cannot, I think, licence any particular substantive or concrete theory but, at best, facilitate a set of perspectives on the nature of the economy and society and how to understand them. Specifically, from the perspective supported here science, including economics, has been found to be properly concerned not primarily with event regularities but with identifying and illuminating structures that govern the events of experience. But if methodology/philosophy has pointed to the objective of uncovering causal structures and conditions, etc., it cannot do this job of uncovering. This is the task of science, including economics. Even so, and always remembering in any case that methodological/philosophical analysis is as corrigible as any other, the current state of disarray in the discipline of economics is such that methodological analysis appears to be much required. Indeed, the situation appears such that extensive ground-clearing through sustained and informed critical reflection and debate is precisely what the discipline most needs.

Methodological reasoning in economics, then, is non-optional and currently highly desirable. It just turns out that the specific theory of methodology associated with positivism (and its displacements) is uncritical of, and so unhelpful to, science including economics. In accepting the characteristic results of, or which derive from, the specific version of positivism here in question the assessments of Hahn and others that methodological discussion makes little difference are thus intelligible. Positivism in all its forms, however, is untenable and the resulting dismissal of methodology is unsustainable. And one significant upshot of all this is that while assessments such as Hahn's and Weintraub's, etc., serve, unhelpfully, to encourage and perpetuate the uncritical and almost universal application of the questionable and highly specialised methods and criteria of contemporary economic orthodoxy, the transcendence of this sub-optimal situation clearly warrants a more explicit, sustained and generalised concern for (critical) economic methodology/philosophy.